Originally Posted by
eminusx
i'll admit im a bit confused by what you mean when you say doing 'a single workout'? What i meant was carrying on with the usual 5-6 days a week training plan but shuffling my training plan efforts to accommodate a supercompensation type approach.
From what ive read and the diagrams in this thread, supercompensation does also occur after even a single a big effort: you do your effort, your body recovers, then your body effectively fortifies itself against similar big efforts by rebuilding itself stronger than before, this temporary peak is the supercompensation zone. If you take advantage of this and time it right you can effectively ride those peaks and improve your performance quicker.
It seems logical that this gradual improvement would happen over a longer timeframe as you say, e.g a 4 week block then a week off, rinse and repeat. If you ride 5 or 6 days a week then factoring this into your training plan might prove more effective than an unstructured approach where youre simply slogging away every day & risk overtraining or not doing enough and undertraining.
At some point you're going to reach a fitness level (generally doesn't take long if you've been training before) in which a single ride is likely not going to be enough to illicit a significant enough adaptation. Your focus shouldnt be on those singular workouts, rather it should be a consistent and progressive workload.
Slogging away everyday isn't training, it's riding. Training has hard days and easy days. They need to be distinctive to be most effective.